


Mask and Shadow

by DawningStar



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 15:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18528313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawningStar/pseuds/DawningStar
Summary: How would Shikamaru react to finding out that Shikako is in ANBU?





	Mask and Shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GriffinHeart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GriffinHeart/gifts).



Bat had been following orders, minding her own business, definitely not looking for trouble. 

What Shikako’s trying to say here is that none of this is her fault. 

Once she sensed Shikamaru’s chakra flickering at high speed across the edge of her range, alone, no force of orders or logic could have kept her from running to make sure he was all right. 

He was not all right, as being kidnapped by an unknown team of shinobi is never a good sign. 

Bat had assessed the situation and taken down the enemy shinobi before they could get any farther from the border. Bat had been very careful not to use identifiable Nara techniques. Bat’s ambush was a brilliant success, which she would have to remember to tell Tsunade-sama. 

Unfortunately for Bat, the rescued Konoha shinobi had been drugged and paralyzed but not quite unconscious enough to miss the screams and the smell of blood. 

Surely Tsunade-sama would understand the need to check for injuries. Bat had long since henged for the sake of secrecy, a random civilian girl that wouldn’t connect Konoha to this mess more than necessary. 

Should she have put a knockout seal on him? Between the drugs and the injuries Bat can’t justify it, and she can’t carry him all the way home without abandoning her current mission completely. 

The sheer panic in his eyes convinced her to drop the henge. Shikamaru knew the proper codes for Konoha ANBU to prove themselves to allies. She lifted her hand into his view, shaping quick signs. Code first, then she could check his health without forcing him to worse terror. 

Her brother watched the code with sharp eyes and blinked a short response, wary but calmer. Good. Bat added the gesture for a medical check and waited until he blinked again. 

Despite Tsunade-sama’s encouragement, Bat wasn’t very good with diagnostic chakra. Finding time to practice just didn’t happen, not when she had so many other things to do. 

Under pressure, the technique failed twice and she scowled in absent concentration, head tilted. The third try told her that Shikamaru is in good health except for the fading traces of a commonly known drug. 

Once she recognized it, she remembered Sakura’s drill on how to burn it out of a shinobi’s system. A quick brush of chakra and it faded, almost gone. 

Shikamaru’s eyes went wide all at once. He hadn’t recognized her attacks, but Bat had a terrible suspicion that he had recognized her amateur medical technique. Or the hand-signs they’d learned together? The fact that she was tinier than most ANBU? 

If she ignored his reaction, maybe she could still deny everything. 

Knocking him out now would do more to confirm his suspicions than mitigate them. Bat bit her tongue unhappily and signed, _Report._

The details of how he got separated from his team and what happened were important to Bat, but Shikamaru just stared at her for a long moment, not even testing his limbs. 

She should have henged again, maybe, but without the accurate ANBU mask and uniform she couldn’t be sure if Shikamaru might assume a trick and find some way to attack her. 

_Report,_ she repeated in total silence. 

His eyes fell closed in something very like despair. “How can I protect Konoha from threats like that if I can’t even protect my sister?” Shikamaru muttered. 

Shikako took a deep breath, let it out again. No one in range of her senses. She slapped a privacy seal onto the ground beside them and said very calmly, “The threats aren’t going to stop. Maybe your sister has grown enough that she would rather have your support than your protection.” 

Shikamaru looked at her with a pained expression, but Bat didn’t have time for this, Bat was still under orders. _Report_ , she signed again, crisp and professional, and stared at Shika through her mask until he did. 

(Later he would be angry, but Shikako would have no time for that either.) 

* * *

“What might make someone choose to join ANBU?” 

This was a dangerous question, edging much too close to the rules against identifying ANBU even within Konoha. Shikamaru knew it, and if Shikako had actually showed up for him to lecture he would have been more discreet. 

Her one-minute visit to wave at their parents and ignore him gave him little choice. 

His father pinned him with a long silent look; an assessment and a warning. Shikamaru bore under it as long as he could without squirming. 

Shikako has been going out in the field with no backup to speak of! He needed to know this! 

Even if she did swoop in and take out his enemies with...more competence than he’d have expected. 

“There are many reasons why someone might feel they can do more for Konoha with a mask than under their own name,” his father said at last, with a distant tone that sounded more like the Jounin Commander than the patient parent he is at home. “I’m sure you are grateful to ANBU after that rescue, Shikamaru.” 

He hadn’t done a very good job of looking grateful. His fury at being helpless and his fury at being forced to leave Shikako out there running whatever mission she’d interrupted to rescue him weren’t mixing well, and even Shikamaru knew it. 

“I’m grateful everyone came home safely,” he said. Glad that his team survived the ambush. Reluctantly grateful that Shikako had at least dropped in to aim a blank stare past him, so that he knew she hadn’t died as a result of the delay to pull him out of trouble. 

His father raised an eyebrow, waiting. 

Shikamaru stormed to his room, furious, that evening and several nights after. 

It wasn’t until later, when the pain of the empty place beside him began to outweigh the fury, that he finds a different question to ask over shogi. “What kind of support is it possible to give an ANBU agent?” 

At last, his father smiled. 

They’re strategic geniuses; they can find ways, once Shikamaru is ready to look. 

Maybe then, in time, Shikako will talk to him again.


End file.
